101: Silent Drama vs Loud Drama

Welcome into a new episode of the Reality Based Leadership Podcast. I'm Alex Dorr, CEO at Reality Based Leadership, and excited you're here because at the Reality Based Leadership Podcast, what we do is we find the latest ways to help you ditch the drama in your workplace, build alignment in your teams, and call those you lead to greatness. Hey! In this podcast, we're switching up the format a little bit as we move forward. We want them to be short and sweet, probably 15 to 20 minutes. And each podcast is going to have a topic, usually topics I'm hearing from leaders out there on the road as I do my speaking engagements. We'll hit some core content, the principles of ditching the drama, as we say, but a lot of times around those principles, people are saying, Well, what about this nuanced situation? Or what about this challenge that is, I see the elements of what you covered in there, but let's go a little deeper into this topic. And that's what I want to bring back to the podcast moving forward. And so today is exactly that. It is a question that came up recently when I was with a group of about 150 leaders and we're working on core stuff around ditching the drama. But this conversation and this topic comes up quite often, and it's on the difference between what I call loud drama and more silent drama. Now, when I say silent drama, that doesn't mean that it isn't as detrimental to your team, or it doesn't hold us back from results, or it doesn't lead to conflict. It just doesn't show up the same as some of the more obvious loud drama. That most people, as I start to talk about it in my sessions, say, oh, yep, that happens. And so today I wanted to go through some of those and then give a couple examples just to get you thinking as a leader where you might be handling pretty well the louder drama and having some good tools for that. But some of these silent sources of drama-causing interferences you might be missing. And so let's, let's dive into the difference. So first of all, if you're new to drama, new to drama diffusing, Drama is any thought pattern or behavior that's taking us away from results and happiness at work, or in some of your workplaces, we call it employee engagement. And we found the average person spends about 2.5 hours per day. And so a key responsibility as a leader that can really transform your workplace and the culture is not only recognizing when there is an interference of drama, when you're in it yourself, Or others are, but then what is the way to call it out? And in a respectful way, we don't want to, you know, judge others. We don't want to really be like, you're the drama. We want to recognize that it's our human condition and we're into one of those patterns that's not so helpful for our team or for how we can address this issue. And so let's call a timeout and then let's get into a better mental process to be able to think through this problem, turn towards each other. And move forward. And so, because this ditching the drama is such a massive opportunity for people to get back plugged in and adding value, and it is a big key to improving our culture and sustaining our great culture, if you already have one, that's why we want to be able to recognize loud and silent drama. So let's start on the first side with the more obvious loud drama. And when I'm doing my training sessions or even my keynotes, This is where we start, and it usually is the bigger source of drama, the more amount of time leaders spend in drama, which is on things that I would call ego-based behaviors. They show up as gossiping, tattling, venting, scorekeeping, judgment, assignments of motive. This usually starts obviously in our heads as seeing a situation and then adding in You know, what's going on and it's usually negative. This is kind of the default of the ego is to take what happens in our reality and then add in a story or a judgment that points to the negative to fill in that information. And so that's where, as we start thinking that, most people then move into this coming out in their voice as venting or complaining. And when people hear about this, sometimes I call it BMW driving, bitching, moaning, and whining. And this is where we see that first loud drama. And where does this show up in your workplace? Every time usually you get pulled away for a, hey, do you have a minute? That usually leads to more of the loud drama. Because as you know, those, hey, do you have a minute? Are very rarely just a minute. Most people need 20 to 45 minutes. And the typical topic is not, here's where I'm struggling and where I am probably hindering in the results on my team. So please coach me, get me into accountability, and help me find my space for impact. That's not usually how that, hey, do you have a minute? question goes. It usually moves into hearsay, speculation, things that never happened, things that probably would never happen, and often people not present. And then the typical conclusion of that 20 to 45 minutes is often, please don't do anything. I just wanted you to know, so now I feel better. And so being able to— 2 things here. Handle those situations that are venting and complaining, and then also handling those hey, do you have a minute interactions in a more intentional way that's still very approachable. And so how do we look at this? So the first thing is looking at venting. I often help leaders think about venting is different than sharing a feeling. And a lot of times this gets all put together. Sharing a feeling is one sentence. You know, I'm upset that I didn't get the information I needed from Michael, so it made me late for my deadline. That's sharing a feeling. One sentence. We gotta be able to feel our feelings. That's part of psychological safety. We don't want any of us as leaders to be shutting down people from sharing feelings or just putting in a blanket no-venting policy, like no venting at all, No complaining. Don't bring anything to me without an answer. That is a bit too rigid, and that is going too quickly into what I call calling people up and coaching without loving people up and validating their experience. That I see why you're frustrated. This is really annoying when you don't get the information you need. I can see why you're frustrated. But then the key that we have to watch for where the loud drama comes is people move into The story around that. It sounds something like, he does this crap on purpose and he's always trying to sabotage my career and he wants to make things harder than they need to be and he always wants people to be behind. So then they just have this horrible time at work and this is all an elaborate scheme to make me look bad in front of the higher-ups. And as a leader, that's where it's key to step in. You validated the experience, but we have to watch for the venting because That's where the loud drama starts, and this can spread as we bring others involved, as that person vents to others. And so my favorite way to coach through this, or look at this if you have the relationship, is after validating the experience, we move into saying, thanks for sharing that story. I've actually taken a moment, I've captured some of that, those thoughts there on this piece of paper, because I want to help work through this and get intentional. So let's look at what do we know for sure? See, the ego, which is usually the fuel of most venting, it loves to judge and create stories, usually negative. It really doesn't like to get into self-reflection. And it's hard to vent and self-reflect at the same time. So as we move into a question like, what do we know for sure? Is all of that true? Can we know that he's really trying to sabotage your career? And as we even transfer that to paper, into what I call an edit your story tool and just look through everything that was said there, we start to get a clearer picture of reality. And the ego loves to do that. It loves to distort our view of reality and really take fact and add story, usually negative. So when we edit that story down or we ask a, what do you know for sure? And that person comes on that journey with you, we're getting more accountable to the truth and we're silencing a bit of that loud drama to get to the facts. Now, it doesn't mean that there's not an issue there. It doesn't mean we have to, you know, we're not going to now get the information. It doesn't mean we might not have to have a professional conversation with Michael about how important it is to hit our deadlines. But the reality is, is so much of what I just said there in my story is going to fall away if I put it against the truth. What do we know for sure? Can I know he does this on purpose? I can't. I had said this always happens in there before. It's happened twice in the last year. He's trying to have an elaborate scheme to sabotage my career. I can't know that for sure. Now, if I don't question that, I end up taking action from these untrue stories, and it changes how I treat Michael. Michael treats me rudely back, and I'm like, see, I'm right about crap I make up. But it's the inner monologue of the ego that then turns into loud drama if I'm not careful about Looking at the story. And so I love that edit your story and supporting people to just take a moment, a one scrub through of cleaning up their thinking before they take action. This can really, as a habit, as a good mental process, help to balance out some of that loud drama in our workplace. And so that's the first thing. Now, those Hades to heaven interactions, those, those for some of us happen You know, 20 times a day. And we feel like we're adding value by jumping in and fixing, jumping in and solving it for people, or just giving them the answer. One of my favorite tools is to bring in what's called the SBAR. And I can link this in the show notes. But if you haven't been using the SBAR, or you've been a fan of reality-based leadership for a long time, had some success with the SBAR, and then it's gotten a little stale, Or you've gotten a little bit away from the tool. Because by the way, the ego loves that. The tool will be working great to clean up our thinking and really support in handling that loud drama. And then once it starts going well, the ego morphs like a Pokémon. It's like, oh, I know you really want me to like write that out in a tool, and I want— I know you want me to reflect on it, but I get it. It's just— oh, it's just a little venting. I You know, I'll just spill it out there and we'll clean it up. I don't need to use a tool. That's the ego morphing like a Pokémon to get back into venting and drama. And so I love a template like the SBAR. Do it on a piece of paper. S-B-A-R. Grab that person that's in loud drama, or even if it's your own thinking and you're about to vent, and just say, what's the situation? One sentence. Why is this relevant? The relevant background. That's the B. To our strategy, to some of the key focuses on our team. So let me make sure I'm bringing up things that matter to those that I'm bringing it up to and to our organization, to our team. Then what's the A? This is the analysis of the situation. This ensures that I'm not pontificating on opinion. It makes sure that I'm actually focused on how we could, the data, the evidence, our standard operating procedure, you know, talking to others in the organization. And then the R, those are my recommendations. And this tool alone, if you use it yourself or have your teams using it, ensures that when the loud drama hits us and there's a problem to be solved, we're not contributing to it. We're taking a moment to think through it and get into a how we could mindset. Given this situation, we've thought about it, we've gotten into the relevant background, we look at the analysis, we got some good data, we got some good recommendations. And then we can thought partner with other parts of the business to move into how we could, not just loud drama about why we can't. So those are 2 ways that loud drama comes up and a couple of great tools. I'll link both of those in the podcast notes. Now, those are sometimes the obvious sources of drama. Here's where we want to get into what I call silent drama. This is where it doesn't always feel like it's noticeable on the surface, but something just ain't right. Like things just aren't moving. It feels like the buy-in is fake in some ways, or we're not getting true energy towards how we could. This is usually a sign that we're into a team or a few team members that have some silent drama. And silent drama comes up— the ways I hear it the most is when people say like, why weren't we consulted on this decision? Or I often see it where people start to choose their personal preferences Over the potential of the business or the team. And I think I want to drill in for right now just on that choosing preference over potential. One of my favorite questions when there is some silent drama is, are we choosing preference over potential? And it's one question, but man, does it just reach a long way. And I see this often when a team's trying to just put in a standard process to make work more efficient. And if they have a general amount of buy-in around this new either software or this new process that helps to make work less, you know, messy or inefficient with workarounds, and it could be so good, it's been proven whether it's best practice in other places or it's a software that we're implementing that's going to help standardize a ton of our work, it's been proven that it could be great for our organization. Someone raises their hand and they're like, well, I'm kind of a top performer here. And I'm top salesperson. Do you mean that I need to follow that process? And this is that silent drama, that silent tug, because what they're trying to have us do as leaders is allow us to negotiate a non-negotiable where the non-negotiable is everybody's following this process as a point of truth and using this software. But then we have one region or one top salesperson that wants to do it their own way. Do it on paper or in a spreadsheet. They want to do it as they've always done it. And if we as a leader allow that different standard, it lowers the standard and everyone else is like, well, why does, you know, Mike not need to follow it but we do? And it creates a hot mess. And so, that's an example of silent drama that might be affecting your team is where we allow these exceptions for some and not others, especially on non-negotiables that lead to getting our work done efficiently. Often I hear those that are getting into silent drama really frustrated about when roles are shifting, where they used to be a decision maker on a lot of things, or they were involved in a lot of decisions, and then now for whatever reason that's an outsourced decision. Or maybe our new flows of our software makes that decision, like here's the process we follow, we just follow the steps. And they're often asking, why wasn't I consulted? Or, you know, before I buy into this, I want to make sure they've heard everyone's opinion. And so they withhold their buy-in until they are adequately consulted on tons of decisions in the organization. And a little bit of this, when I hear this, are some businesses are growing really fast. They are moving people from being generalists where they used to be involved in a lot of things to more specialists. And in making that jump, they are still holding on to the fact that they used to be consulted on so many things. And so what I like to talk a lot about is in any situation, as you're feeling that silent drama, I like to clarify that there's really 3 roles we might be playing. We're either going to be the decision maker, and that's the ability to say yes and/or no to, you know, what's going on here, this change, this strategy. But most of us aren't setting that strategy. We are really in support of the strategy. We're in executing and making it least disruptive to our business and trying to move it forward given the risks. Now, if you're not the decision maker and you're still frustrated, why weren't you consulted? You have to ask, was I asked to be a consultant in this situation? Now, consultants don't tell us what to do to try and achieve a goal. They let us know what we could do. They lay out some options for the decision maker or makers, which is usually a small percentage of the organisation or your team. And we say, here's the ways you could possibly get there and some of the cost benefit with each one. And so the moment that as a decision or as a consultant, I say the only way to do this is, I'm now driving that decision and out of my role. And so that's gonna be some silent drama because I'm trying to force the decision one way to my preference. Let's say the decision maker, I think in my head number 3 is a great option, and I've really thought, you know, that's the way to do it if I ran the organization, and they actually go with number 1. Now, if it's not illegal, immoral, unethical, I can't be like, oh, you know, you asked for my consulting and I had an, you know, one that I would lean to and you went with this one. I can't be like, why did you do that? My role is then to move into execution. And now the 3rd role, decision maker, consultant, The last one you could possibly be that a lot of us actually are in when we're in this silent drama is a good person to be informed of this decision or this new change where we're headed. And so you'll play all 3 of these roles in your career and maybe even throughout the day, your meetings, you might be popping into a different role. But the drama comes when your team's playing the wrong role for what the situation merits. And so when I hear someone often saying, why weren't we consulted, or why don't they ask the people closest to the work before making these decisions, a lot of times there was external forces like the marketplace, a vendor, finances, maybe there was technology. In some cases, maybe the weather was affecting why this needed to be decided. And so we're in a different role than we think, not decision maker, maybe not even consultant. It's settling into that— Good to know, good person to be informed, and now team, let's make this happen. Let's execute this given the risk. And so, loud drama, silent drama, wanted to point some of those out in this podcast. Would love to hear your feedback on if, yeah, I'm taking care of the loud drama, I think I'm doing that well, but maybe Alex, you exposed some of the silent drama my team's stuck on. So leaders, as you move forward this week, I want you thinking, About whether you're bumping into some silent drama. If some of the obvious tools and techniques you're using from reality-based leadership, those seem to be working but something else is going on. You might be into this space of silent drama creeping in. And I want you to think about a couple things we covered. So, reach out if this resonated. Reach out if you want more on this. And thanks for following along. Let's keep ditching the drama and let's keep loving people up. But remember, It's our job to call them up to greatness.